


A Mysterious and Lovely Feeling

by Azar



Series: A Wild Hope [1]
Category: Chronicles of Narnia (Movies), Chronicles of Narnia - C. S. Lewis, DCU
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-01-23
Updated: 2010-01-23
Packaged: 2017-10-06 14:02:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,858
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/54464
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Azar/pseuds/Azar
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>What sort of woman would it take to win the heart of the High King?</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Mysterious and Lovely Feeling

**Author's Note:**

  * For [angelsgracie](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=angelsgracie).



> No one belongs to me but Hope, Emma and Artie, and I only have joint custody of Hope. All characters you recognize belong either to the estate of CS Lewis or to DC Comics. Hope and her sister, Grace (mentioned but never seen) are on loan from DebC and Christina A. General spoilers for the whole Narnia series--set after The Silver Chair but before The Last Battle.

The war might have been over for years now, but the signs of it still littered the English countryside like bleak souvenirs, the scope of the destruction obvious even to those--like Hope O'Neil--who'd never seen England before the war.

It wasn't as bad here in Oxford as it had been in London, where Emma lived, but still...every once in a while they'd pass a bombed-out building or a pile of sandbags that no one had gotten around to moving and it would take her back to those nights at home, listening to Emma cry as she described the unrelenting nightmare that had been the Blitz. Then Hope had been too young to really comprehend the magnitude of what her friend had been sent across the ocean to escape; now each reminder they passed left her mind only too happy to fill in the blanks with images out of a nightmare.

The Brewers had been lucky; their home hadn't been destroyed in the bombings. Many homes, businesses and priceless historical landmarks had.

"Hope? Do come down to Earth, won't you?" Emma teased softly from her seat beside Hope in the taxi that was taking them from the train station to Balliol College, where her young man, Arthur, was currently a student. "What are you thinking of?"

Somehow, "Imagining what a hell your life must have been during the War," didn't seem like a good answer, even if it was the truth. "Oh, nothing. Just daydreaming, that's all." Twisting around in her seat, Hope smiled at her friend. "So, tell me: what's Arthur like? Does he live up to his namesake?"

Emma gave her a puzzled frown. "His grandfather? How should I know? I never met the man."

Hope shook her head, giving her friend a half-hearted glare. "No, silly. I meant King Arthur."

"Oh, Lord no." Emma grinned back at her. "Artie's the love of my life, but kingly he's not." She pointed out the window, briefly changing the subject. "There's Lady Margaret Hall, the first of the women's colleges. Mother says if you truly want to come to Oxford, there's your best chance."

Hope's eyes followed Emma's pointing finger. "Do they even accept Americans?"

"I've no idea, but it can't hurt to try, can it?" the English girl said with a little shrug.

"I suppose not," Hope agreed, discreetly crossing her fingers in the pocket of her winter coat. "But you haven't answered my question."

Emma looked at her. "Which question was that, then?"

"What's Arthur--Artie--like?" Hope persisted. She grinned at Emma. "For someone you say is the love of your life, you're not very forthcoming about him, except that he's no knight in shining armor. Are you afraid he'll fall madly in love with me and leave you or something?"

Emma let out an indignant noise and gave her friend a half-hearted shove. "I'd love to see you try," she teased. "Artie's a dear. He's a bumbling fool, particularly when it comes to romance, but at least he tries." The fondness in her voice and the glow in her eyes easily compensated for the not entirely glowing review. "And oh, Hope, he's so smart! He's studying to be a barrister, and I just know one day he's going to be a minister or elected to Parliament or some such. The best part, though? He's not jealous, like some boys. He doesn't mind if I spend time with friends or family rather than with him. And he wants me to have a career of my own, so I won't be left destitute if anything should happen to him."

Probably because he'd seen that happen one too many times during the War, Hope reflected grimly to herself. "He does sound nice."

Emma just looked at her, her lips twitching in amusement. "Well, if I did harbour any notion that you intended to steal him from me, the absolute lack of enthusiasm behind that remark would quickly disabuse me of it."

"I didn't say anything wrong!" Hope protested, embarrassed.

Emma grinned. "You didn't have to. Your trouble, Hope O'Neil, is that you're still a romantic. You really are looking for a prince to sweep you off your feet and carry you away to his castle."

Hope flushed and glared back. "So? What's wrong with that? It worked for my sister, didn't it?"

At that, Emma let out a blissful little sigh. "I still can't believe that: Bruce Wayne! You know, for a country so proud of its 'democracy,' you lot certainly have a fair amount of uncrowned royalty. Still, how Grace managed to catch the finest of the lot..."

"She's Grace," Hope answered with undisguised pride in her voice. "Everyone loves her."

By this time, the taxi had reached their destination. The driver pulled to a stop along one side of the commons, then hopped out to open their door.

Snow covered the ground like an enormous fur cloak, spreading across the trees, bushes and dead grass as though it had grown out of the earth instead of falling from the sky. Students hustled to and fro, bundled against the cold, many of them carrying books and notebooks as if there weren't days still remaining of the winter holidays. Except for one young man on the other side of the courtyard, who was deeply engrossed in a snowball fight with a boy and a girl too young to be students.

One snowball, thrown by the girl, caught him right in the narrow patch of skin between the collar of his coat and his scarf, and the young man let out a yelp that was surprisingly dignified. "Oh, so that's how it's to be, is it? Stealth and treachery?" he teased his attacker in return, bending down to pack his own snowball but with his eyes never leaving her. "Well, three can play at that! Flank her, Ed!"

The girl giggled and broke into a run, but his longer legs quickly caught up and pinned her with a snowball at the same time as a second one struck from the other side, thrown by the younger, dark-haired boy.

Hope smiled: now there was someone who had his priorities right.

Emma jumped down beside her. "Come on, then! Artie swore he'd find a fourth for us, so we could go out to dinner in town without you feeling a spare. I don't know about you, but I'm starving!"

Laughing, Hope hooked her arm through Emma's and together the two of them set off across the commons. Quickly sinking deep into conversation, Hope barely noticed when their path took them perilously close to the snowball fight. Until, that is, a well packed snowball caught her unexpectedly in the ear. Hope let out a muffled shriek before promptly overbalancing in surprise and landing square on her behind in the snow.

She barely had time to register her predicament before strong hands in black leather gloves were grasping hers, helping her to her feet. "Dreadfully sorry about that," a newly-familiar voice apologized, contrite blue eyes meeting hers as soon as she was upright again: it was the young man she'd seen earlier.

He smiled and Hope's heart skipped a beat.

"I'm afraid I got rather caught up in the heat of battle," he explained. "I didn't realize there were ladies on the field."

"Oh no?" Hope was amazed to find herself replying in an equally teasing tone. She pointed a finger that miraculously managed not to tremble at the younger girl she'd seen with him. "What about her, then?"

He glanced back, his smile widening as the girl in question reached his side. "My sister, Queen Lucy," he said affectionately, "has never been very good at being ladylike."

'Queen' Lucy elbowed him sharply in the side, but the fondness in their teasing instantly reminded Hope of Grace and herself.

"You must be Peter Pevensie," Emma guessed before Hope could ask. "The one they call 'Sir Peter.'"

Hope looked at her friend and Emma winked discreetly back, causing Hope's face to turn a nice, embarrassing shade of red. Oh, didn't that just figure!

"Oh, do they?" Lucy asked mischievously, something indefinable in her eyes as she smirked at her brother.

Peter looked mildly embarrassed, but not by the title itself so much as Lucy's reaction to it. "It's a nickname," he admitted, looking again at Emma as if trying to place her. "How do you...?"

Emma smiled. "Artie's spoken of you: Artie Drew?"

A light went on in his eyes. "You're Emma!"

Emma beamed, obviously pleased that Artie had mentioned her to his university friends. "This is my friend, Hope O'Neil."

Hope shook Peter's hand, suddenly grateful for the cold weather, since gloves kept him from feeling how much her palms were sweating, or the electric tingle that shot through her at the touch, even through two layers of fabric. How embarrassing: she'd known him for two seconds and already she was nervous as she'd been around her sister's college boyfriend, Chad, when she was twelve years old and madly in love with him.

"I am sorry about the snowball," he apologized again.

"It's all right, really," she demurred, embarrassed. "You have a good arm."

_You have a good arm?_ Hope cringed. _Why didn't you just wax poetic about his eyes and his smile while you were at it?_ She could easily have done so, since both were making her heart race.

By now, the younger boy had reached them too, along with a dark-haired girl about Hope's own age. Hope's smile faded a little. Of course. Any man that good-looking and gracious would have to have a girlfriend.

Noticing them, Peter glanced from one to the other and smiled. "You've already met Lucy. This is my other sister, Susan, and my brother, Edmund. Ed, Su, I'd like you to meet Emma Brewer and Hope O'Neil."

Susan gave them both a patronizing smile, and despite Hope's relief that she was Peter's sister, she immediately hated her. "I really must apologize for my family," Susan said. "Acting their age in public seems to be beyond all three of them."

All of the other Pevensies tensed visibly at this, and Hope instinctively went on the defensive. "Unless they're all ninety and hide it well, I don't see a problem. I'm from New York: I like a man who can defend a snow fort if he has to."

Peter gave her a startled but grateful smile.

"Oh, you must tell us all about New York, what it's like!" Lucy gushed. Her eager eyes met Hope's and the older girl instantly knew she'd made a new friend. "Susan's been to America, but not the rest of us."

"Lu," Peter reminded her gently. "These are Artie's guests, not ours. It isn't right to take them away from him."

Oh bother. Hope had gotten so caught up in meeting the Pevensies that she'd completely forgotten they were here to meet Emma's 'dear bumbling fool' instead. Not that she had anything against Arthur Drew, but...oh, she might as well face it. Hope had a crush, and a bad one. Or as Emma would say, she'd taken quite a fancy to Peter Pevensie.

"Em! There you are!" An unfamiliar voice broke into her reverie, and Hope turned just in time to see a young man about Peter's age, with short, curly red hair hurrying toward them. From the way Emma's face lit up at the sight, it was easy to deduce that this must be Artie, their beloved but hapless host.

"I'd begun to think you'd got lost or that the train was held up," he fretted upon reaching them, pulling Emma into a tight embrace.

"No, darling, just diverted a bit." Emma held on just as tightly, but let go long enough to introduce them. "Artie, this is my dearest friend in the world, Hope O'Neil. Hope, this is my Artie."

"It's a pleasure, Miss O'Neil," Artie greeted her formally but nervously. Odd, how even with the use of her title, Peter's more informal greeting had still seemed a thousand times more...chivalrous. It had to be the nickname.

Artie turned back to Emma. "I'm so dreadfully sorry. I ought to have met you at the station, but I was still trying to find a dinner partner for your friend, as you asked--"

"You mean, there's no one?" Emma answered in dismay. Then a gleam of mischief came into her eyes, and she spun to face the Pevensies. "Artie, why don't you invite Peter to join us?"

Artie looked vaguely startled by the idea. "Oh. I suppose I could..."

"I'm flattered, and I'd love to, really, I would," Peter declined politely but with genuine regret. "But I've got my family--"

"Nonsense!" Lucy interrupted, the same gleam in her eyes as in Emma's. "You don't need to entertain us each second of the day, Peter. We can find something to do. Can't we, Susan?"

Susan looked from her brother to Hope and then at Lucy. Suddenly, a smile spread across her face that transformed it completely, making her look much less like a prig and more like...well, it was ridiculous, but almost like a high-born lady. "Yes, I'm sure we can find some way to occupy ourselves for an hour or two."

"It's a matter of honour, really," Edmund chipped in slyly. "No true knight should refuse a lady in distress."

Hope found herself silently praying that her face wasn't nearly as red right now as it felt. It was beginning to seem like every single person in the college, let alone the commons, had witnessed her tidy little emotional tumble over the edge into complete infatuation.

Peter looked at Hope, and something in his eyes made a tiny spark of hope kindle inside her. "In that case," he said, with a grave smile. "I should be glad to join you."

+++

With rationing still such a recent memory, going out to dinner was a rare enough treat at home. Here, Hope imagined, it must be something of an occasion. There was something pleasing about that idea: pleasing enough that she didn't ask Emma any questions that might potentially contradict it.

"Did you know," she asked as Peter graciously pulled out her chair for her. "That there are colleges here named St. Peter's and St. Edmund's?"

Artie had given them the grand tour that afternoon, after they'd bid the Pevensies a temporary goodbye and before she and Emma had returned to their hotel to dress for dinner. If it had taken her an unusually long time to decide what to wear...well, it was normal to be nervous before an almost-blind date, right? At least, that's what she kept telling herself.

Peter laughed. "I did. Mum swears Ed and I were named for them, and Su and Lucy only escaped being Margaret and Hilda by virtue of her having an aunt and a godmother to name them for. Dad was an Oxford man too, you see, though he studied at Magdalen."

"My father and grandfather were Balliol men," Artie chipped in proudly, though not boastfully.

Hope shook her head in wonder. "I'm lucky my grandfather even lives in the same state! All the history you have here...it's incredible. I think there are buildings in this town that are older than my country."

"Are you interested in history, then?" Peter asked.

Hope nodded eagerly. "History and mythology. I intend to study one or the other--both, if possible--if I get accepted to Lady Margaret."

Just then the waiter arrived and they paused the conversation long enough to order.

When he'd gone, Artie asked, "You mean, for example, the history and mythology of Ancient Rome?"

Hope looked uncertainly at Emma, but her friend seemed just as interested so she continued. "Not exactly. It's the common threads between different ancient cultures that intrigue me. It makes you start to wonder if some of the fantasy creatures and heroes that are so prevalent were based on something or someone real." She looked at Peter. "For example, everyone knows there are giants in the Bible--the story of David and Goliath--but did you know there are dragons as well?"

Peter looked startled. "No, I didn't."

"Job 30:29--'I am a brother to dragons, and a companion to owls.' And the 'leviathan' of Job 40 is a scaled, fire-breathing sea creature that sounds a lot like a dragon to me. Even as recently as the Middle Ages, people believed they really existed; look at the story of your own Saint George and..." She stopped suddenly, her face coloring. "I'm sorry. I tend to get carried away."

"Please don't be embarrassed, I find your idea fascinating," Peter assured her hastily. "I've some interest in the subject myself, and Lucy's always had a particular fondness for fauns."

Hope grinned at him. "Considering the reputation of their cousins, the satyrs, as her older brother shouldn't you be discouraging that?"

Peter laughed aloud. "Be that as it may, I rather think you're right--who's to say such creatures couldn't exist, if not in our world than some other?"

"Like Mars?" Artie asked, now sounding equally intrigued.

"Not precisely what I meant, but something of the sort, yes," Peter answered with an enigmatic smile.

"I think he means more like Lewis Carroll," Emma said. "Hope and I used to play at being Alice all the time when we were girls, didn't we?"

"You were Alice," Hope corrected with a grin. "I was Dorothy. Wonderland was always a little too surreal for my tastes, although I did like the idea of her becoming a queen at the end of Through the Looking-Glass. But Dorothy got to stay in Oz; even if Ozma only made her a princess, that more than made up for it."

"Yes," Peter answered softly, with a strangely wistful quality to his voice. "I rather think it would."

There was a look in his eyes, too, that made Hope's stomach flip in a delightful way.

"It occurs to me," Artie interjected, not seeming to notice how his friend's demeanor had sobered. "That as often as Emma has spoken of you, Hope, I don't believe she's ever said how the two of you met."

The two girls looked at each other and Emma flushed. "Oh...I suppose I always thought it must be obvious. Hope's family took me in, during the War."

Peter looked up at her. "You're from London too, then? What part?"

Emma nodded. "Harold Hill. You?"

"Finchley. Su and Ed and Lu and I were sent out to the country," he explained.

"You're lucky," Emma answered with a teasing glance in her friend's direction. "America might as well have been another world, it was so different. I don't know how I'd have managed without Hope to hold my hand."

"So one might say you truly were Alice." The enigmatic smile was back as Peter looked back towards Hope. She still couldn't quite identify the look in his eyes that he kept directing towards her, but she definitely liked it. "And now Hope has her chance to be Dorothy, coming here. Does that mean you're likely to stay?"

"I guess that will depend on if anyone wants me to be their princess." The minute the words were out of her mouth, Hope clapped a hand over it in horror. "Oh no. I didn't...I mean...that didn't come out right."

Peter smiled at her, a smile that almost seemed like a promise. "I don't think there's a thing wrong with how that came out."

Her heart somersaulted again, and in that instant Hope knew with a sudden clarity that Grace wasn't the only O'Neil sister who fell in love quickly. Because if this mysterious 'Sir Peter' would have her, she would gladly be his princess for eternity.

+++

Lucy was waiting for Peter in the common room--the only room in the dormitory where girls were allowed--when he and Artie returned from dropping the girls off at their hotel. She pounced on him almost at once, an impish smile lighting up her entire face. "So? How did it go?"

Peter laughed, glancing over to wave goodnight to Artie before drawing her over to a set of chairs near the fire and away from anyone else in the room. "Where have Su and Ed got to?"

"Susan's gone back to the hotel and Edmund found someone new to trounce at chess," she answered cheerily. "He said he'd come back when they had finished. But that's not important right now: I want to know everything, Peter."

Laughing, Peter pulled his sister into an affectionate embrace before sinking down into a chair. "Honestly, Lu? If I didn't know better, I'd swear Aslan arranged this. In all my years, in both lifetimes, I've never met a woman so...perfectly suited to me. Not even amongst all the high-born ladies whose fathers sought my hand for them back in Narnia."

"Perhaps because she sees you, not the High King," Lucy suggested with a beaming smile. "And how do you know Aslan didn't arrange it? You do remember He said He's here in our world too, only by a different name?"

"True," Peter said. "I just recall that even when our being there the first time was a fulfillment of prophecy, He still asked us to stay; He didn't force us."

"That doesn't mean he couldn't have brought your paths together, then left it to you to decide what to do about it," Lucy answered wisely, but then she'd always known Aslan best of the lot of them. Perching herself on the arm of his chair, she asked, "So what's Hope like?"

Peter smiled, and there was something in that smile that she'd never seen before, but it was something that made her happy for him in a way she hadn't been since he'd been told he'd never return to Narnia. "She believes in mythical beasts, that dragons and giants were once real and might still be elsewhere. And when she was a girl, she wanted to be Dorothy Gale from the Oz books, because Dorothy was made a princess of Oz and invited to stay."

"Oh, Peter!" Lucy exclaimed happily. "Are you going to tell her about Narnia?"

He thought about it for a long moment before answering, "Not yet, though I want to. I think it's only right that she should meet the others first, and get their blessing."

"You don't have to, you know," Lucy answered. "You are the High King, after all."

He smiled at her. "Yes, but a good king considers the needs of his subjects first, remember? You reminded me of that when I forgot it. Telling someone new, whether I think she'd believe it or not, is something that will affect all of us. That's not a decision I can or will make arbitrarily."

"Besides which," he added in a much more serious tone. "She's American. I've no way of knowing if I'll ever see her again."

"You will," Lucy assured him with the confidence that was uniquely hers. "If Aslan truly had a hand in this, He'll see to it."


End file.
